


Five Times Baal and Inanna Found Out More About Themselves

by weakinteraction



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Brief femslash elements, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:58:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: "You will be loved.  You will be hated."Ananke never specified that it would be Baal doing both.





	Five Times Baal and Inanna Found Out More About Themselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/gifts).



_12th August 2013_

_Inanna comes to Valhalla_

"Baal," Ananke said. There was the faintest hint of an unfamiliar expression on her face: a smile. "This is Inanna." He could only see Ananke -- whoever this "Inanna" was must be quite small -- until she stepped aside.

He had been ready to make some sarcastic comment, though quite what he still wasn't sure -- something about how he still wasn't really sure monotheism was such a bad idea, or how they still didn't have any Norse gods for their "Valhalla" -- but all the witty retorts died on his lips as he caught sight of the newcomer. It felt as though he had been hit by one of his own thunderbolts.

Inanna's body was slight, sinuous even. The make up on his face accented his eyes, which danced with a joy of being alive which belied what Ananke must have just told him about his suddenly imminent fate.

"Are we allowed to convert?" he asked Ananke, the mock-earnestness of the question not as mock as he'd have liked. "Is that a thing we can do, if we're gods ourselves?"

For a moment, Ananke's face broke into a genuine smile. "I'm happy that you two have found each other again," she said, and it sounded as though she meant it.

"So," Baal said once she'd retreated. "What she said ... Do we know each other?"

"I came to your press conference," Inanna said. "Or ... the old me did. The old me was one of those fans. Y'know? It's all very confusing. But I think ... I think the new me knows you, though. It's like remembering that you knew something, but not being able to remember what it was."

"I know that feeling," Baal said. He crossed over to the drinks cabinet. One day, Ananke said -- one day soon, even -- Valhalla would be so much more than the upmarket celebrity retreat it was now, but the part of Baal that still remembered his old life was pretty impressed even with this. And, he realised with a start, keen to impress Inanna too. "So, do you want a drink?"

"Are you ... are you flirting with me?"

Baal suddenly stopped short. Was he? He'd never flirted with a guy before. But this felt easy. Right.

"Yes," Baal said. "That a problem for you?"

"Not in the slightest."

* * *

_22nd August 2013_

_Baal and Sakhmet's First Gig_

Sakhmet was sprawled lazily across the couch in the backstage area, applying fresh nail varnish to her claws.

"What about _her_?" she asked, indicating with her brush one of the people on the periphery of the crowd milling about in the afterparty. They were a mixture of a few minor celebrities, a slightly larger number of confused (but seemingly mostly impressed) journalists, a fair few Pantheon fans -- as Inanna had been, back when he was still Zahid -- who knew more than Baal himself did about the gods, and, the largest group by numbers, friends of friends of the owner of the venue who had come along to gawk. They all seemed too scared to approach Baal and Sakhmet themselves.

"What _about_ her?" Baal said.

"You can't deny she's giving off signals," Sakhmet said.

"Maybe she's giving them off in your direction."

"Maybe I'll go and find out," she said with a sudden grin, springing from the couch.

"Yeah, you go do that," Baal said to the thin air.

"It went well," came a voice from behind him a moment later. Inanna's voice. His spine tingled involuntarily.

"You were in the crowd?" Baal said.

"No, I can just read the mood of the room," Inanna said. He put a hand on Baal's shoulder. "I wanted to be there, but Ananke said I might distract you."

"Huh," Baal said.

Innana slid gracefully around the side of the couch to sit down next to him, keeping his hand on Baal's shoulder the whole time. "I've been finding out more," he said in an urgent whisper when he was seated.

"Oh yeah?"

"About my powers," Inanna said. In an even lower whisper, he added, "And about us."

Baal crouched forward, suddenly interested, and Inanna leaned in.

"It turns out I can do ... divination. The stars--" Innana laughed "--they talk to me. So I asked them about us."

Before he could go further, Sakhmet flopped back onto the couch, suddenly sullen. "It was you she was interested in," she said shortly.

"Hi, Sakhmet," Inanna said brightly.

"I made an excuse for you," Sakhmet said. "Not the truth, obviously."

That suited Baal just fine, given that he didn't know exactly what the truth was himself. He'd never been with a man before, but _after_ that first time with Inanna, he'd realised that it had always been a possibility, that it wasn't just the connection between their two immortal souls somehow overriding his preferences. It was just that it had been simpler to ignore those feelings. It was still simpler to pretend they weren't there, from the point of view of public reception, even in 2013, even for a god.

"Go on," Baal said to Inanna in a whisper, when it became clear that Sakhmet wasn't going anywhere, clearly intending to sprawl sullenly until something came along to distract her attention. But who knew when that might be.

"We have known each other before ..." Inanna grinned. "Many times. And in all sorts of different ... configurations."

"Oh?"

Inanna gripped Baal's hand suddenly. "Let me show you."

_Lips on lips, skin on skin, bodies melting into one another ..._

Baal drew his hand away involuntarily. "How did you do that?"

The impressions were already fading away. But there were so many: overlapping, merging into one another. Their past selves must go back and back through the millennia.

Inanna leaned even closer. "I think I can do more, if there's more ... contact."

Baal raised an eyebrow; Inanna mirrored the expression. They grinned at each other.

"We're leaving," Baal said to Sakhmet. "If anyone asks, tell them we've gone back to Valhalla. God business, you know."

"Uh huh," Sakhmet said.

In the end, they didn't make it back to Valhalla before beginning to experiment with Inanna's new found ability. In the back of the limousine, Baal leaned back on the plush leather seats as Inanna kneeled in front of him. With unnecessary care, he loosened Baal's trousers. Reverence, Baal realised. He was doing it reverently.

Just before he wasn't in a position to speak any more, Inanna muttered an incantation, and together, they _remembered_.

* * *

_32nd Century BCE_

_Somewhere in what will one day be called South America_

The fires raged throughout the city, the dispute between the rival cults finally boiling over into open warfare.

The prophets and their acolytes would have been shocked to see the scene on the hillside above the city: their two goddesses -- the goddess who nurtured the crops and rallied the soldiers alike, and the goddess who rode the storm that watered and ravaged them at once -- entwined.

Baal used her fingers and tongue to tease and torment Inanna into raptures, before finally delivering all that they had promised.

Exhausted, they lay back on the warm grass. Gradually, they came back to reality and took in the view of the city below. The city authorities were already trying their best to re-establish control, enforcing a curfew and trying to contain the fighters into different districts. But they would fail; Ananke had ensured she it. She said that it had to be this way, that the clash of ideas was what truly sparked the human imagination. That these fires were not destructive, but creative.

Inanna doubted, Baal knew. Inanna argued that if this city would be lost to history as Ananke intended, then surely everything they -- Baal and Inanna, the last two remaining, and the ten who had gone before -- had done there would be for nothing.

But Baal had faith in Ananke. It was Ananke who had brought them forth from humble beginnings into godhood. It was Ananke who had guided them through all of the last two years, Ananke who had dried their tears as they had mourned each of the others in turn.

It was Ananke who had instructed Baal to take Inanna out of the city, to stop her from trying to mediate between the two sides.

And in the end, Inanna had had faith in Baal.

* * *

_5th October 2013_

_Inanna's album launch_

"I'm nervous," Inanna said.

Baal made a sound that might have turned into a chuckle, if he hadn't bit it off. "You don't really seem nervous." He looked as though he was enjoying his time in the green room immensely.

"That," Inanna said, "is because I am mustering all my powers to hide it, including my mortal self's powers of repressing his true feelings in the hope that they will magically disappear."

Baal stopped pacing around and looked at Inanna, head cocked to one side. "I really can't imagine you were ever like that."

"You never met the old me."

"Can't you do a divination or something, find out how it will go?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no," Inanna said. "That would break all the rules."

"According to Ananke?"

"According to my intuition," Inanna said primly. He waved his hand ambivalently. "And Ananke."

Baal looked at the fire exit. It probably wasn't really alarmed. He opened it wide and said, "Come on, we're going for a smoke."

"I thought you didn't--"

"You need to calm down, so I'll make an exception."

"I'm flattered."

Inanna followed him outside and then took out two cigarettes, passing one to Baal. They lit them simultaneously with clicks of their fingers. They grinned at each other, involuntarily.

Baal took a long drag, fighting the urge to cough. "Some bad boy you are," Inanna said, but his smile removed any sting there might have been in his words.

Baal took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it, studying it as though it was some alien artefact that he had come across by accident. "I suppose it's stupid, to worry about the health effects. We'll be dead long before they'll affect us."

"No, we won't."

"Oh come on, you know the deal," Baal said. "Loved. Hated. Within two years, dead."

"That's not how I choose to see it," Inanna said, his voice a quiet whisper. He placed his hand on Baal's chest, to cut off his protest before it could start. "Oh, I know what Ananke said, when she pushed me into that long fall that hasn't even finished yet. When it happened, I felt _everything_. But I decided a while back not to look at it that way. I decided that it means we get to live forever now. Forever _together_." He let go of Baal's chest and gripped his hand. "We're part of a story that started thousands of years ago, a story that's written in the stars. A story that hasn't finished yet. And even if _our_ story finishes, it's not the final chapter. Well, probably not. My sources are unclear on that point."

"You're not being as reassuring as you think you are," Baal said.

"What do you want me to say? Yes, we're going to die soon. We don't know why; we don't know _how_. Of course it's terrifying. But isn't it just a little bit exhilarating as well?"

"Are you talking about being gods, or about your album launch?"

"Can't it be both?"

* * *

_14th December 2013_

_Two nights after Inanna slept with Lucifer_

It was an ordinary suburban street, just around the corner from the Tube station where they had left Morrigan's domain. On the other side of the road was a pub, just opening for the day.

It was an ordinary suburban street, but it was also the centre of a universe that was collapsing. Clouds were gathering up above; Baal knew that his subconscious was doing it, but didn't care.

Inanna was still following, as he had since Baal had insisted that Baphomet show him the fastest way to get back to the surface. What Inanna had casually revealed at the end of their all-night conversation had left Baal furious. "Baal--"

This time, though, he stopped and turned around.

"I'm sorry," Inanna said, reaching out both hands.

Baal flinched away; he didn't want to be drawn back in. Didn't want the reminders of everything they had shared, now and in the past. "No, you're not."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be who you wanted me to be. But I can only be who I am, I know that now."

"I do want you to be you!" Baal said. Curtains started to twitch, but at this precise moment they didn't care. What was going to happen? A few videos on YouTube? Ananke could get the lawyers on that easily enough, though it would have been easier still if Morrigan had still been with them. No one here had signed a contract in relation to image rights.

"But you want to be the only one who gets to have me," Inanna said.

"That's how it's supposed to work."

"Maybe for you," Inanna said. "But not for me. That's what I'm sorry about."

For once, Baal couldn't find any words. No, that wasn't true. He didn't want to say the words that were pressing against his lips. They weren't fair, not to Inanna, not to him. Lucifer, on the other hand, would be more than a worthy recipient -- she'd better stay far away from him for a long time.

"Goodbye, Baal. I'll see you around." Inanna turned back in the direction of the Tube station.

"That's it, 'goodbye'?"

Inanna turned as he walked away. "I still love you," he said. "I always will. But yes, this is goodbye."

Inanna pulled up his collar as the rain began to fall.


End file.
